Room 217

Father turns his head in shock to finding me standing at the end of the staircase looking directly at him, the room turns quiet for a few moments...

"Joana what are you doing up at this time?" he says.

"I should be asking you the same thing" I say with a little sass.

"Why don't you just head back to bed and we will discuss this in the morning"

"But-"

"Now!" as he slams the fridge.

I slowly turn away as I run back upstairs trying to hold in my tears. Father has never yelled at me like this or gotten as angry as he did. As get back in bed and lay down the tears start coming.

"Everyone is lying to me" as I say in anger.

I try my best not to overthink or get into my head about anything, that will only make things worse. I calm my self down as I slowly drifted into deep sleep at once.

As I wake up the next morning with red puffy eyes from the night before I get up and as I go open the door I hear mother and father raising their voice at each other, I put my ear against the door to hear what they are saying...

"You know I can't do this by myself" says my mother in a loud tone.

"Well I can't be here, not at times like this" he yells back.

It went silent...

"Romona, Romona?" my father crys for help.

I open the door and run as fast as I could to see what had happened with mother.

"Mother!" as I say in shock.

I find mother on the floor with father hovering over her.

"Di- did she pass out did she fall, what happened?" I say as I start to panic.

" I don't know she just collapsed" father says while he picks up mother.

I follow along as dad carries mother to the truck, as confused as I may be I should not ask any questions I could tell father was very stressed and I didn't want to stress him out even more. We get in the truck with my mother unconscious in the back seat. I look over at my father as he drives away. I could tell by the look of his face he was scared and was trying to be calm in front of me.

"Were are we taking her" I say to him softly.

"Well your mother is breathing but she isn't waking up, so I think its best we take her to the closest A&E so we can get her help" he says with a shaky voice.

We arrive at the A&E which only took about ten minutes sense we don't live very far. Dad gets mother and runs into the building as I follow behind trying to keep up. As I walk in I see a few nurses helping my dad get mother into a wheelchair. They seemed very quick and I could tell they had a slight panic in their face, which made me start to feel anxious. They quickly run with mother down the hall, they made a left and that was the last I saw before the disappeared out of my site.

"Where are they taking her" I ask father.

"There going to run some tests and make sure she has no injuries, don't worry they will take good care of her. Why don't you go wait and take a seat over there"

I walk over and take a seat in the waiting room, and all these crazy thoughts are going on through my head. I keep thinking about the worst possible scenarios, and its making me go insane. All I know is I need to figure out whats going on and why I feel like I am being lied to.

Two hours go by and finally a nurse walks in..

"Jones" she calls our last name.

"That's us" father responds while standing up quickly.

"Follow me"

I get up and we start walking down the long hallway, as I look around me I get overwhelmed with the amount of sick patients in the rooms. I wondered what situation their in and all I could do was hope the best for them. We finally reach the room they were keeping mother in, 217 was the room number.

"Mom!" I say running towards the hospital bed.

"Shes very weak and sick due to her condition" the nurse says.

"Condition?" I say to father.

Father looks a way with a worried face.

"Your mother was just diagnosed a few weeks ago with Huntington's Disease in the brain, and she isn't doing well. There isn't much we can do but comfort her" the nurse says.

"Did you know about this father?" I say as I hold in my cry.

"I am so sorry, I will leave you two to talk alone" the nurse says.

I sit in the chair next to mother unconscious in the hospital bed as father slowly walks towards me with a scared look on his face. He takes a seat at the end of the hospital bed and stairs at mother. It was silent for a few moments until he glances at me..

"When we found out about your mothers disease a few weeks ago, we didn't want to frighten you so we kept it a secret. We knew this disease would catch up to her but we didn't think it would happen this fast" father says.

"Well is there some sort of cure or-"

"No romona, there is nothing we or the nurses can do to stop this, we are just going to have to comfort mother until her body gives up and she begins the take her last breath"

My heart drops and all I could do was sit there and cry. My body fills up with anger and emotion as I roll up in a ball and continue sobbing. Words cannot describe the pain I was feeling all I wanted was to just be dreaming and wake up in my bed, but this was no dream.